by Osborne, Jon
She put her cellphone back into her purse and dug out a pen and notebook next. “It’s fine, Miss Lawson,” she said, fighting back a wave of disappointment. “Thank you for taking the time to watch. Anyway, if you’ll just write down your address for me, I’ll make sure you get your check within the next week.”
Lawson took the pen and notebook and scribbled down her address. When she’d finished, she handed them back to Dana and said, “How the heck did that woman even get into the building in the first place, Agent Whitestone? That’s what’s bugging the crap out of me. I mean, security’s not all that tight around here, but still…”
Dana shook her head, not especially interested in continuing the conversation with Lawson since the woman didn’t have any useful information to offer her. And anything other than useful information basically amounted to small talk at this point, a complete and utter waste of time.
Not to mention a very expensive waste of her time.
“I don’t know,” Dana said, slipping out a business card from her purse and handing it over. “That’s what I’m hoping to find out. Anyway, if anything occurs to you later on I’d really appreciate it if you’d give me a call at the number on this card. Anytime. Day or night.”
Lawson took the card from her and tucked it away inside her own purse. “Absolutely, Agent Whitestone. I’ll make sure I do just that.”
And with that, the coroner’s office employee simply left the bathroom – five hundred dollars richer but without ever having used the facilities at all.
CHAPTER 30
From my unobtrusive position over in the corner of the noisy nightclub, I watch as a third huge black guy indelicately muscles his way in on the shameless ménage-a-trois currently taking place out on the crowded dance floor.
Already sandwiched by the other two thugs from earlier, Dinah Leach doesn’t seem to mind the added attention one little bit. Quite the opposite, actually. After all, why settle for just two pieces of cake when you can have three, right?
I narrow my eyes in distaste. Judging by the hair graying at the new guy’s temples, no doubt he’s known on his block as an “O.G.” – an “original gangster”. One of those guys who don’t seem to realize that the concept of being cool had passed him by a long time ago.
A moment later, the sounds of Gaga fade away and the DJ flips the wax over to “Bullet With A Name” by the heavy metal group Nonpoint. Almost comically, the three thugs pause as one and look at each other in confusion. I almost choke on my ice water. Obviously, the idiots don’t have the slightest clue of how to dance to white-people’s music.
I shake my head in bemusement, both at the thugs’ cartoonish reaction to the new music and also at the song selection itself. The lyrics couldn’t have been any more appropriate if Clive Barker himself had written them. Because I have a bullet with Dinah Leach’s name on it, don’t I? Even if I’d go with the knife tonight?
I sure do. Just to be safe, I’d tucked a.45-caliber handgun into my jacket pocket before leaving for the club that night. A little added security to ensure that I lived up to my mother’s extremely lofty expectations of me.
In a perfect world, I’d have marched directly out into the middle of the dance floor and put a bullet right into Dinah Leach’s worthless skull right then and there. Sadly for me, however, this wasn’t a perfect world. Not even close. Not yet, anyway.
But I was working on it.
The heavy bass coming from the nightclub’s speakers punches at my chest like fists, making me wish I could somehow punch it right back. Doosh-doosh-doosh-doosh.
Finally, the song switches over again, this time to “Stronger” by Kanye West. Out on the dance floor, Dinah Leach gleefully succumbs to the renewed dry-humping foisted upon her by her three thuggish-ruggish friends, who seem much more confident in their dance moves now that a fellow brother is supplying the beat.
When the sounds of Kanye fade away several minutes later and gives way to Justin Bieber’s latest, Dinah Leach disengages herself from the panting pack and heads in a beeline for the bar.
Crestfallen looks color in the faces of her dance-mates as they watch her walk away. Three necks swivel on three sets of powerful shoulders. Six bloodshot eyes immediately scan the dance floor for another willing whore with whom they might get their respective grooves on.
I chuckle to myself and check my watch again in the strobe lights flashing overhead. I allow a full thirty seconds to pass before following Dinah Leach to the bar at a discrete distance. Isn’t difficult in the packed nightclub.
But to hell with all of the foreplay already, right? I’m ready to get my own groove on.
Fighting my way through the bumping and grinding going on out on the dance floor – to the maddeningly catchy chorus of JB’s “Girlfriend” now – I shoulder my way up to the long bar lined with people and ready myself for what will come next. Any nervousness I’d felt earlier in the night has completely dissipated now. In its place, a calm like none I’ve ever experienced before settles over me like a mother’s warm and comforting embrace.
At least what I imagine a mother’s warm and comforting embrace must feel like.
Taking a deep breath through my nostrils, I sidle up next to Dinah Leach at the bar and get into character. Almost time for the payoff. Just a little bit longer now. And the clock’s still ticking. I wonder if Dinah Leach can hear it yet.
Tick, tick, tick…
CHAPTER 31
Dana finally left the coroner’s office through the same doors that she and Templeton had entered half an hour earlier, stepping outside into the frigid winter air and flipping open her cellphone before punching in the number for Bill Krugman down in DC.
The howling wind gusting in off Lake Erie sliced hard through her body while she walked quickly to her car, whipping her short blonde hair wildly around her scalp and chilling her all the way down to her bone marrow.
Dana shivered violently as she carefully navigated the frozen pavement beneath her feet. She probably should’ve waited until she’d reached her car to make the call, but she wanted to bring the Director up to speed on what was going on in Cleveland as quickly as possible – not to mention receive his blessing to send the autopsy-room video to the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division down in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The Bureau was in the midst of a billion-dollar project to compile the world’s largest database of suspects’ physical characteristics, and Dana hoped that the technicians stationed in the foothills of Appalachia could match up the face of the woman in the autopsy video to an existing face already on record. The hope of those in charge of the FBI’s sweeping new project was that in the next few years or so law-enforcement officials would be able to access the biometric information, including iris patterns, face shapes, scars – even the way people walked and talked – to crack cases and identify terrorists and fugitives. More than a million images of fingerprints, irises and faces of Iraqi and Afghan detainees had been collected over the past few years alone, and domestically that number wasn’t very far behind. As things stood currently, the FBI maintained fifty-five million sets of electronic fingerprints on file, with a possible match made or ruled out somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred thousand times a day. So any way you looked at it, it wasn’t a small-potatoes operation by any stretch of the imagination.
Dana stopped walking and turned her face away from the bitter wind that was turning the left side of her face into a Popsicle as the Director finally picked up his ringing phone on the other end of the line. “Agent Whitestone,” he said immediately. “What’s going on? Is everything OK? Are you OK?”
Dana scrunched up her shoulders against the freezing cold. Against the vicious cold. “I’m fine, sir,” she said. “Almost back to a hundred percent now.”
Krugman blew out a slow breath. “Great. I’m very happy to hear that. Anyway, what’s up then? You never call me this late unless it’s about work. Please don’t tell me you’re back on the clock already.”
Dana shive
red again against the unrelenting cold. “I’m afraid so, sir,” she said, then she brought the Director up to speed on the details of Christian Manhoff’s brutal murder as quickly as she could.
When she’d finished, she then told him about the mystery woman in the autopsy-room video.
Krugman grunted into the mouthpiece on his end when she’d finished briefing him. “By all means, send in the video,” he said. “But I want you to have backup on this one, Agent Whitestone. I don’t like the idea of you getting called out by name again, Dana, and it’s standard operating procedure to team up when something like that happens. You know that.”
Dana let out a relieved breath; happy to find that Krugman wasn’t going to give her a hard time about getting back to work so soon after emerging from her coma. “I do, sir,” she said. “And I’ll take all the backup I can get at this point. Who did you have in mind?’
The Director paused. Then he said, “Bruce Blankenship, I think. Works out of our field office in Nebraska. Something of a technological wizard, from all reports. Might come in handy with this autopsy-video mystery. In any event, I’ll forward him your contact information and instruct him to call you first thing in the morning.”
“Thanks a lot, sir. I really appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it. But Agent Whitestone?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Promise me that you won’t overdo it out there. Promise me you’ll take it easy.”
Dana smiled softly at the Director’s concern. Sometimes Krugman seemed more like a grandfather than her boss.
It was a nice feeling.
“OK, sir,” she said. “I promise.”
Krugman grunted into the mouthpiece again. “Why don’t I believe you when you tell me that, Whitestone?”
Dana laughed. “Probably because you’re a very smart man, sir.”
The Director laughed, too. “Luckily for you, young lady, flattery will get you everywhere with me. But I’m serious about what I said, Dana. Be careful out there, OK? Watch your back.”
“Yes, sir. Will do.”
After chatting with her boss for another moment or two, Dana switched off the connection and glanced around the mostly deserted parking lot. Other than a few scattered cars and two men in overalls who were loading boxes into the back of the coroner’s office building, everything looked typically Cleveland to her at the moment.
In other words: cold and gray and dark.
Fishing her car keys out of her purse, she finished making her way over to her Protégé, again concentrating on navigating the black ice beneath her feet as she went. She didn’t want to wind up looking like Brent Price from Channel 4. She had no interest in learning how to ride a skateboard.
Finally reaching her car twenty seconds later, she inserted the proper key into the lock and twisted until she heard the locking mechanism disengage. Then she slid behind the wheel and reached over to pull shut the door behind her against the soul-numbing cold.
But that was when she looked up to see the two men dressed in overalls who’d been loading boxes into the back of the coroner’s office building a moment earlier standing directly over her.
“Hey, bitch,” said the taller of the pair. “Tell me something: what’s a fine piece of ass like you doing out here all by herself on a night like this? Don’t you know that it’s dangerous out here?”
Dana shot her hand inside her jacket for her Glock 17 but by then it was already too late. The smaller of the two men shot out his own hand and twisted her left wrist around hard, sending a searing jolt of pain rocketing up her arm as the taller of the pair moved forward and pressed a damp white cloth over her mouth and nose.
A medicinal smell filled Dana’s nostrils. Her brain went fuzzy. A moment later, everything around her went as pitch-black as the inside of a coffin. Chloroform, she supposed – a favorite prop of all the bad guys in the movies.
As her world gradually floated away into nothingness, in her mind’s eye she and Jeremy Brown were riding through New York City’s Central Park in a horse-drawn carriage.
Jeremy was just leaning in for their first kiss when an even sharper pain between her thighs replaced the agonizing pain in her arm, snapping her mind back into the horrifying present.
A horrifying present in which two men dressed in blue overalls were brutally raping her in the otherwise-deserted parking lot of the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office.
PART V
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
“Named for Huracan, the Carib god of evil, hurricanes are amazing and destructive natural phenomena that occur 40 to 50 times worldwide each year. Hurricane season takes place in the Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Central Pacific from June 1st to November 30th, while in the Eastern Pacific the season stretches from May 15th to November 30th.” – Matt Rosenberg, in his article, Terror of the Coasts.
CHAPTER 32
Dinah Leach is leaning her lithe body over the bar at Johnny’s Hideaway directly to my right and attempting to catch a bartender’s attention.
I study her face from the corner of my eye for a moment before sneaking a quick peek down the front of her blouse. From the look of things, she’s trying to trade in on her small measure of notoriety for some faster service. Presumptuous bitch. Does she really think that she’s better than everyone else in the nightclub? Better than me? If so, then she’d better enjoy it while she still can. Because pretty soon she’d never feel anything again.
I cock my head in her direction as she leans her glistening body even farther across the long bar, showing off her impressive cleavage to a male bartender. Works like a charm. Then again, where’s the great big surprise in that? Good boob jobs tend to draw their fair share of attention, and Dinah Leach has a great boob job. Twenty thousand bucks at a bare minimum, and I would know.
A smart business move for her when you looked at things honestly – just like it had been for me.
Straining my ears, I catch the whore’s words above the deafening music. She’s ordering just one more drink before tabbing out for the night.
“Vodka and Red Bull,” she shouts, favoring the bartender with a seductive smile and a slight shimmy of her gorgeous silicone hooters. “Easy on the Red Bull.”
The bartender nods and steals a furtive peek of his own down the front of her blouse before moving away quickly to prepare her drink.
Thirty seconds later, the reality-television star is throwing back her head and draining the booze in four quick swallows.
From this distance, I can actually hear the ice cubes bang against her veneer-covered teeth. I cut my gaze down to the bill lying on the beer-soaked bar and lift my eyebrows, impressed. Two hundred and twelve bucks, not counting tip. A solid night of drinking by anyone’s measure.
Curious, I watch as she fills in the line for the gratuity. Another forty bucks for the leering bartender. And why not? What the hell does she care? It’s all just dirty paper to her, right?
With the woman standing no more than two feet away from me now, I realize how much older she looks in person than she does on television. Her face is a little more haggard, her features a little more drawn, the wrinkles around her mouth a bit more pronounced.
Still, there’s nothing at all wrong with the way Dinah Leach smells. Not even close. The light and fruity scent of her perfume floats up into my nostrils and makes me feel hopelessly dizzy, sending wave after delicious wave of olfactory delight flooding through my amped-up system.
I breathe in deeply and savor her sweet smell, mentally handing it to her. Even after all her frantic dancing, she still smells like a brisk walk through a garden on a fresh spring day.
I lean over and whisper into her ear. “You smell absolutely wonderful, princess.”
Dinah Leach whips her face over to mine and pulls back her head on her shoulders in offense, her bright green eyes locking onto mine like heat-seeking missiles.
“Don’t waste your time, pal. Whatever clever thing you’re thinking of saying next, don�
��t bother, because it’s not going to work. I’m already spoken for.”
And with that decidedly rude comment, she simply turns on her heel and marches briskly out of the crowded bar, not even bothering to turn around to look back at me. Smug, self-satisfied, completely sure of herself – that’s Dinah Leach, all right.
The poor thing. Who the hell does she think she’s kidding?
A hot jolt of anticipation rockets through my veins as I watch the cocky slut saunter away, the urge to kill her even stronger now than it had been before. More insistent. I’m happy to feel this. Because her bitchy attitude would only make it that much more enjoyable for me when the time finally comes to kill her. No guilt. No worries. Just good old-fashioned murder.
Exactly the way my mother likes it.
“Nice try, white boy.”
I turn in the direction of the deep voice that’s coming from my left side. The “O.G.” from the dance floor; grinning like a fool with his mouth hanging wide open to display the ridiculous silver hardware flashing inside.
I lift up my eyebrows on my forehead quizzically. “Excuse me?”
The wannabe gangster shakes his head and barks out a short, ugly laugh. “I seen you talkin’ to that bitch, dude. Well, you can just forget about it. She belongs to me.”
I hold his stare. It’s an easy thing for me to do even though he must outweigh me by seventy-five pounds. Because once you’d looked into Annabeth Preston’s freezing green eyes, everything else was a cakewalk after that. “Well, now,” I say calmly, “is that a fact? Does she know that?”
The black guy widens his grin. “Not yet, but she’s about to find out. Ya heard me?”
I frown. Apparently, he’d been watching Dinah Leach while she’d been ordering her drink at the bar. So had he been watching me, as well?
Probably not something I should leave up to chance at this point.
I lift the corners of my mouth into the semblance of a smile. “Go get her, tiger,” I say in a perfectly even voice. Above all else, you needed to show guys like this one that you weren’t afraid of them, much like you needed to do when confronting an aggressive dog. Or was that dawg? Hard for me to remember these days. “She’s more your speed, anyway,” I go on. “She’s just a worthless whore to me.”